


stand by

by rudimentaryflair



Series: AELDWS 2020 [7]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, me writing this: might fuck around and find out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26047714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudimentaryflair/pseuds/rudimentaryflair
Summary: Two men walk into a bar, ordinary except for the fact they don’t exist.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Series: AELDWS 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1828894
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	stand by

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Week 7 of the AELDWS 2020 Challenge.
> 
> Prompt: Time Will Tell  
> Genre: Backstory  
> Word Count: 225-250

Two men walk into a bar.

That’s how you start a joke. Here’s how you start a story:

Two men walk into a bar, ordinary except for the fact they don’t exist. 

How does a man not exist? Perhaps he burnt his birth certificate. Set fire to his childhood home and attended the funeral of the person his parents begged him to be. Or perhaps he struck a deal with the Devil and became a military man, then a sandman, then a ghost. Perhaps he felt the world in the palm of his hand like a caress, like a suckerpunch to the face; perhaps he got bored.

Perhaps he did none of these things, because remember, this man doesn’t exist. 

Let’s try again: there are two men sitting at a bar; one is supposed to be dead and one never existed. They’ve both killed before. 

No, that’s not a story either. That’s a profile. 

One last time. 

Two men are sitting at a bar, their heads bent close together like lovers, but they aren’t lovers, not yet. If they were history books, they would be empty Word Documents. If they were heroes, this would be an origin story, but they aren’t, so this isn’t. They are talking about dreams, for the first time.

No one notices the calm before the storm, the short intake of breath before a gun firing. The little tales before a legacy. 

But that’s the thing about backstories; they’re never quite as big as you think. 

**Author's Note:**

> As you can see, when I have no idea what I'm doing, I default to weird prose. 
> 
> I'm rudimentaryflair on Tumblr!


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